Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Reviews

We have deployed Cisco Meraki devices at 107 locations to connect with the cloud for centralized management. We are using MX68, MS120, and MR33.

We are currently also considering Cisco Meraki for another project for implementation at 28 locations. We have a team of three members looking into different solutions and vendors. We're looking into the firewall, SD-WAN, and email certificate.

The centralized management is the most important feature. We can monitor what is going on at every location in our network through just one center.

I would like them to add some more SD-WAN ports. We have seen one implementation where there were four ISPs. Currently, we have a maximum of two ports for ISP in this device. Therefore, we cannot connect directly, and we need other switches. There should be some option to have more than two ports for SD-WAN. 

I have been using this solution for seven to eight months.

I have faced issues with one or two boxes. We replaced those boxes.

Cisco provides the best support among all the vendors. It's the best in terms of technical support.

The initial setup is very straightforward. For one location, it would take around two days: one day for the configuration and connecting to the cloud and one day to go to the client location and deploy it.

Cisco Meraki dashboard is very good. It's simple, and you can enable and implement everything using this dashboard. Cisco Meraki is for large enterprises.

I recommend Cisco Meraki to all my clients who have different locations and want to have a centralized location. Every architecture is moving towards the cloud. Centralized management makes accessibility easier for one person. We can know what is going on at a location and what is going into the devices. Whatever configuration changes are required, we can do them from one place. We don't have to go to the client's location. We also don't have to log in to different devices to do configuration or something like that. We can do it from one centralized management.

I would rate Cisco SD-WAN a seven out of ten.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients.

One of our customers has approximately 100 branches that were linked together using Cisco SD-WAN in multiple phases. In the first phase, they started with 40 branches. In the head office, they have two MPLS links and two internet links. In each branch, they have one of each. Before implementing this solution, they could not do both things at the same time.

With Cisco, you can optimize and design the solution in the way you want. For example, you can have 1,000 branches with three or four data centers, and if you can reroute the traffic from one branch to the nearest data center in order to inspect the traffic.

The most valuable feature is the application-level routing. One of our clients used this solution to route VOIP and video calls using MPLS.

The single dashboard makes the management very easy.

This solution has a built-in firewall that handles URL filtering and functionality, but you have to buy other cisco services like, Umbrella. Some of the customers would rather just use Fortinet or Palo Alto. This solution should include a fully functional firewall at no extra charge. At this time it supports layers three, four, and five, but it needs support for a level seven firewall.

Cisco SD-WAN is stable. There might be minor bugs in a few of the features, but overall, the product is stable and the customers are happy with it.

This solution is highly scalable. We have heard that you can have 10,000 or 20,000 servers.

Our clients are medium-scale customers, as opposed to really large enterprises. They are retail stores, organizations in the hospitality industry, and pharmaceutical companies.

We have also worked with Meraki SD-WAN, but the choice of solution depends on the customer's size and requirements. Meraki is for smaller clients. For example, Meraki only supports two landings, whereas Cisco supports more than that.

The initial setup is not that easy, although there is training that is available for it. It will take time to create templates and the other configuration that needs to be done.

it will take between five and ten days to complete the basic, initial setup, which includes changing the IP addresses. After that, you can migrate two or three branches a day if you have the devices.

My advice for anybody who is researching this solution is to consider the size of the environment. If they have 100 to 150 branches, then they should also look into other solutions such as VeloCloud by VMware.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Full replacement of office to office, office to data center, and data center to data center MPLS and private lines with commodity Internet and SD-WAN.

80% reduction in WAN costs.

New sites can be onboarded in hours or days versus many months with carrier based technology. 

The most useful feature for our organization is the combination of on-prem and cloud-based deployments. We connect securely to our hybrid cloud using transit VPCs and cloud on-ramp for fast deployments. We have recently started using deep packet inspection allowing the use of the transit path as the firewall instead of putting firewalls on both ends of the mesh.

The inexpensive Viptela hardware may be replaced with overpriced Cisco routers. This would be a tragic mistake for Cisco as the lightweight commodity platform built by Viptela is the reason to own this solution. 

Since it was Viptela in 2017.

It is extremely stable. You can set it and forget it, if that is your thing. There are a lot of improvements with each full version release. As with all things Cisco, if you have the chance to wait for a few months before deploying the latest release, do it. They can be buggy for the first few months. 

It is very scalable. We have it deployed to 23 countries, AWS, Azure, and our data centers. 

MPLS, P2P lines and multi-point VPN mesh. These were either too expensive or required too much operational overhead. 

The team at Viptela,and subsequently at Cisco, were extremely engaged and ready to help ensure we had a successful deployment. The concept of an overlay and underlay can be intimidating if you are used to conventional networks, but you will get used to it. 

We deployed it ourselves with our own network engineers. 

80 percent reduction in WAN costs. There are no MPLS or P2P circuits left in the organization. 

Cisco, Citrix, and Fortinet.

Map out all of the applications that use your WAN today. If you have assets like physical phone systems or dedicated VPN devices that are not ready to be off-the-books, start the project anyway. As contacts and hardware become end of life, onboard those sites. You will have a full mesh in no time. If you wait for all of your existing technology to be end of life, you are missing the point.

Our primary use case is for the web gateway and VPN server and for access list control. We basically use the solution as a minimal requirement for the network gateway. We have about 50 users. I work as a network analyst and we're vendors, not a direct partner of Cisco. 

The regular net routing is a good feature. It's not just good for routing although like a lot of things it isn't linked to anything else.

On its own the product does what it's expected to do but if you're looking for more features you'd need to move to a dedicated firewall like the ISA firewall. There's something a little inconvenient and old style about it. 

The solution could have a better web interface to simplify changing configurations or see some statistics. I think the main weakness of the Cisco product is the user interface, I'd like to see things more clearly. 

I've been using the solution for five or six years. 

The stability of the solution is one of the better features. 

Scalability is somewhat limited, especially from the technical side. It's just a gateway with some routing and we don't use any dynamic routing. There's nothing fancy and the scalability is enough for our needs. 

Cisco is always good with technical support, it's easy and the contact is fast when you really need it. 

Initial setup is a little difficult but more or less straightforward. We have an older version which is not as flexible. 

It took us one day to implement and we didn't use any advanced features so it was quite quick. We migrated the set-up from the old device and put it on the new one. They're both on the same platform. We did the implementation ourselves and we have one staff member involved with maintenance. We're currently looking to switch our internet gateway so I'm not sure how long this situation will last. We're looking for a provider so we can outsource the network. 

There's not much advice I can give other than to suggest that people get familiar with using the command line.

I would rate this product an eight out of 10 because it has good reliability. We've rarely had any problems with it.  

We use this solution for our web gateway, VPN, and access control.

It is good enough to provide normal web access but it doesn't offer any add-ons. We plan to move away from this solution and use the cloud-based firewall that is managed by our provider.

The most valuable feature is the network routing.

The reliability is high and we have only had to restart it once or twice over the years.

I would like to see a better, web-based interface to make changes to the configuration or to view statistics. The main weakness of Cisco products is the user interface.

This solution would be improved with the inclusion of an ISA Firewall.

I have been using this solution for five or six years.

This is a stable solution. it does what it is supposed to do and is working fine.

I would say that the scalability is pretty limited, although we don't have any issue with it because we only use the basic features. For example, we don't use dynamic routing. We have 50 users.

The Cisco technical support is pretty good. They are easy to contact if you need support and they are pretty fast.

The initial setup is pretty bit straightforward, although it is a little bit hard because it is done through the command line. The web GUI is an old style and not really flexible.

It took us approximately one day to switch from our old solution. We don't use any of the advanced features so it was a simple migration for us.

Our in-house team implemented this solution.

One person is suitable for deployment and maintenance.

We pay for the Cisco Customer Care support, which is a couple of hundred dollars. There are no fees in addition to this.

This solution is only good for basic routing. I cannot map stuff to a network name because it is not linked to anything else. It is a standalone unit.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to familiarize themselves with the command line.

To summarize, the reliability is very high but managing it is a little bit inconvenient.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

There are a few use cases. We work, for example, with a telecom that provides end solutions to end users across different countries.

The product's brand recognition is one of the most valuable aspects of the solution.

We've just started using the solution, so I don't know if there are any features that are missing. We haven't used it long enough to find any faults.

The initial setup could be a bit less complex.

We only started using the solution a year ago.

The solution is stable. There aren't bugs or glitches. The solution is reliable. It just works.

The solution is scalable.

We have the technical knowledge on our side. We get very little support from Cisco, so we rely mostly on our own team.

We use both Cisco and Juniper.

The solution is complex. It's not straightforward. There's a lot of ways to configure it and they're not straightforward. There are two types of the solution as well, so a person would need to know how to deploy either one.

For us, the solution took two to three days to deploy.

I don't know much about the pricing because, at present, we used some simulators to test the software for clients. The pricing does not always match up with what our lab predictions are. We give information to the customers, and we give them some knowledge about the products and we explain the differences between the different vendors, like Juniper, and other vendors small vendors like Altera Technology. Ultimately, the client decides which vendor they will go with.

I'd recommend the solution. Instead of going to another vendor, it's best to go with Cisco, because Cisco has a level of longevity in the global market.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The solution allows us to manage a network or manage policies and goals from the cloud. 

The solution has a high trust-level with clients.

The solution offers the customer good cost savings.

Our organization has found that the solution has helped us increase our levels of security for client networks.

It's very easy to manage and monitor the network's health and security using the solution.

The solution is east to upgrade as necessary.

Since most user-data is going through the solution, we are concerned about security, as all the information is in the cloud and not on-premises. The user data authentification should be higher to better prevent malicious attacks.

I've only been working with the solution for about three or four months, so I am not what I would call an expert on the solution.

The solution is extremely stable. It's not something that has a lot of bigs and glitches. It's reliable. It doesn't crash.

The solution is easily scalable. A company would have no trouble expanding.

We've found the technical support to be quite helpful. We've used it both on desktop and in front of clients and we've been satisfied with their level of support. You can also go online and view solutions to queries.

The initial setup was not complex. It was straightforward. If we couldn't handle a technical aspect, we had technical people on hand who could assist us. The cloud version is easy to operate and manage. We didn't have any issues.

How long it takes to deploy depends on the size of the network, as well as the policies and how much there is to manage. It does take some time.

The pricing of the solution is okay. Previously we used Cisco Prime and found we were wasting a lot. This is much better for us and our clients. However, it's still expensive.

We're a Cisco partner.

I would recommend the solution. I'd rate it six out of ten. If it could guarantee better security, we would rate it higher. The cost could also be less.

Here in Pakistan, there are few deployments of Cisco SD-WAN. We are trying to push Cisco to our clients. But the issue is that the prices of the competitors are too high. So it's very difficult to capture the market here in Pakistan. As you know, practice in Pakistan, the market is under development and Pakistan is a developing country and they are looking for a cheap solution at a price to achieve in terms of price comparison with other windows.

Cisco SD-WAN improved the productivity of our organization, in terms of ROI and in terms of the resources they require.

Good for cloud bases integrations and operational overheads. There is minimum blind space in this solution.

The main issue is that not in the technology, but it comes back comparison. When we do a comparison with other SD-WAN solutions, they are priced better. Then on that basis, they conclude to use the other solution. 

Cisco SD-WAN is stable. It's scalable and reliable, and robust.

Cisco SD-WAN is scalable. It's scalable and reliable, and robust.

I believe the Cisco technical support as compared to other principles is some of the best support we've ever seen.

The initial setup is the most straightforward part. It takes some time. But then you want to add the other branches, it takes only three to four minutes.

I would rate Cisco SD-WAN at an eight out of ten.

We are network providers. SD-WAN is one of the main options we offer to our customers.

Clients primarily use the solution for three main reasons. The first is for cost savings when accessing the internet. The second is access to the cloud. The third is to allow customers a kind of autonomy with management over the network.

Cisco is an industry leader, so customers have a high level of trust with the brand more-so than with some newcomers that might have some more revolutionary solutions, but no name recognition.

The solution appeals to big companies that are keen on selecting a major vendor rather than an emerging one as there's an assumption of reliability.

Cisco's technical solution in itself is very reliable. From a purely technical point of view, this is one of the best options.

Overall, the solution is very advanced in network configuration and offers excellent automated routine features.

The client portal needs to be improved in order to make the solution much better.

The service care area of the solution needs improvement. That is to say, the ability to have a simplified management system is a key success factor. 

If you could have the ability to raise an SD-WAN capability just by activating a kind of license, it would great. We have too much hardware deployment needed right now. 

In the future, if the solution could make it so that there is nothing to deploy beyond a license and some firmware, it would be great.

I've been using the solution for six months.

The solution is stable. This is the reason why we ultimately chose it as a product. Cisco's experience regarding the complex configuration of networks is perhaps the more mature in the market. 

They have made some improvements to the solution, and I think these advancements make it one of the most stable in the industry. It's not great for large configurations, so it may not be as stable in those cases. However, Cisco remains the most stable on the market.

The solution is scalable, however, it may be less so than Cisco Viptela. SortNet also has a portal that is not completely mature, and quite complex. This is why we developed a customer portal, dedicated to our customers, although some portals are still Viptela or SortNet. This custom portal has the ability to simplify the considerations of SD-WAN features for all of our sign-in customers.

We have approximately nine or ten big customers that are still in the proof of concept phase. Of those, three or four are large scale projects. Those have hundreds or even thousands of users on the network.

I haven't been in touch with technical support. I personally have a strong relationship with pre-sales people, but not technical support itself.

I've worked with a variety of other solutions in the past. They have their own approaches to the industry.

Sophos, for example, approaches their solution from a security perspective. The main premise of the product is its ability to secure the network itself. Others have close relationships with VMware solutions that provide for an easy way to bind the applicable network with the network walls.

In the near future, most will need to provide for UCTE, which will become a must-have for any solution.

Fortinet does not have a UCTE itself, but it has a low segment and basic equipment that is really interesting because it is so cheap. Plus, it's not so difficult to add it in to complete another appliance. This is one thing that we sometimes use to expand security requirements while still being able to have specific SD-WAN equipment.

For Cisco or any other solution, SD-WAN's initial setup is complex. The vendor needs to explain and define the customers clearly. It's not as simple as it sounds. It's better for large clients to do a modest deployment rather than a large one as it's not so easy to deploy. This will be clear after running through a POC.

It's much better for a company to do the deployment with the help of a consultant or integrator, as they understand the solution quite extensively. I'd recommend if a company is seeking out an integrator, that they choose a portal DNA integrator.

Typically, we work to offer our customer autonomy, however, we do offer maintenance packages. Typically, we'll sell co-management packages to clients whereby they choose the priority of the application on the network and we will manage all of what is programmed on the customer's behalf.

The solution works very well for mid-size and enterprise-level organizations.

I would advise others considering implementing the solution to set aside time to strategize and create a proof of concept before diving right in. This will help a company reveal where the solution is relevant and where it is not.

Then, it's important to look at the cost and layout of all of the finances so that the board will have all of the information in front of them. It will help them decide if it makes sense to pursue implementation. The finances and P&Ls must be clear for them. 

Finally, it's important to find a good consultant to assist in the entire process. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

There is a commercial bank here in our region, and they want to eliminate expensive and MPLS lines. They've been looking to implement internet SD-WAN solutions and to have them in their central system as two uplinks. One is service provided and another one is for added services.

The solution's application control and application traffic steering tool are its most valuable aspects in terms of how we utilize the product.

The solution allows organizations to have visibility into the application traffic. After implementing the solution, we can see what types of traffic we have. We can see how users are using the internet and will be able to tell if anyone is downloading something that they shouldn't be or if they are consuming a lot of data.

The whole solution needs to be re-imagined. It's quite complex right now and really needs to be simplified to make it easier for those of us using it. It should offer more simplified management as well.

The solution is expensive. They should adjust their pricing to make it more competitive.

I've been using the solution for about one year now.

The solution is stable enough. We haven't faced crashes, bugs or glitches that would make us concerned that is wasn't reliable.

The solution is quite easy to expand. We find it very scalable.

Regarding technical support, we only really needed them to assist us with the implementation of this solution and we haven't had to open a case since them. We were satisfied with their level of support.

We've also worked with Fortinet. Cisco is better for larger enterprises and for telecom operators. However, Fortinet is a much cheaper solution in terms of pricing. Fortinet is also much easier to implement. Cisco implementations tend to be complicated.

The initial setup is quite complex. The whole system is complex. You have to have a good understanding of Cisco and its products in order to handle the setup properly.

I don't recall how long deployment took for our organization.

We asked Cisco's technical support for assistance during the implementation process.

The solution is subscription-based. It is quite pricy, as compared to its competitors, for example, Fortinet. You can see the pricing on the Cisco site, and my understanding is that it's the same pricing across Europe. There are extra costs involved, however, because if you have an on-premises model, you have to buy the equipment. There are also costs associated with technical support.

We're a Cisco Gold Partner.

I'm not sure of the exact version number of the solution we are currently using.

Typically, we work with small to medium-sized enterprises.

The advantage of SD-WAN is that it can eliminate costly MPLS links. That's the big selling feature for us.

I would recommend the solution.I'd rate it seven out of ten. If it was less complicated and offered more reasonable pricing, I'd rate it higher.